Apple co-founder and former CEO, Steve Jobs, has succumbed to a long fight with pancreatic cancer. He was 56.
In a rare showing for an industrialist, tributes have been pouring in from flowers at Apple stores to accolades from his technology rivals.
Karen Barlow reports.
KAREN BARLOW, REPORTER: People read about the death of Steve Jobs on the devices he gave to the world.
The tech and marketing revolutionary died in California surrounded by his family.
MARK PESCE, FUTURIST AND TECHNOLOGY COMMENTATOR: There is no other person in the history of computing that has had such a big impact on computing. If that doesn't justify a cult I'm not sure what does.
STEVE JOBS: This is the best $50 you will ever spend. Phenomenal. It works like magic. We have designed something wonderful for your hand.
VOX POP I: He created products that people really loved and it has affected how they live their lives.
VOX POP II: They're pretty different. I think other people are constantly trying to catch up to Apple. It's not like the other way around.
KAREN BARLOW: Apple broke the news of his passing. It said it has "lost a visionary and creative genius and the world has lost an amazing human being."
MARK PESCE: He said a computer is a bicycle for the mind because you get on it and you can go places that you can't go with your own feet. And really, I think that was his goal. He wanted to bring these bicycles of the mind to everybody and in the end he did because we now all have really smart, really well connected devices in our pockets that do provide us with those wheels.
KAREN BARLOW: Today's iPods, iPads and iMacs have their origins in a California garage in 1976. There Steve Jobs and high school friend Steve Wozniak created their first computer and company, leading to the mouse and the Macintosh.
(Extract from a 1984 advertisement)
ANNOUNCER, ADVERTISEMENT: On January 24 Apple computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984.
KAREN BARLOW: The next year Jobs was forced to leave the company he created. He resigned from Apple after a power struggle and moved on to start a new computer company, NeXT, and redefined animation at the studio Pixar.
STEVE JOBS: Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I am convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers.
KAREN BARLOW: Apple stumbled without Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs stumbled without Apple. NeXT didn't sell well, although Tim Berners Lee used the operating system to write the worldwide web.
In the late '90s Apple brought NeXT and Jobs returned to his original creation.
The technology developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's now signature portable slimline touch screen devices.
STEVE JOBS: These are post-PC devices that need to be easier to use than a PC. They need to be even more intuitive than a PC.
KAREN BARLOW: Steve Jobs was a perfectionist who demanded the best from people around him. His efforts have turned Apple into the world's largest technology corporation but as his fortunes rose his health failed. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004.
Here in 2005 he'd thought he'd beaten it.
STEVE JOBS: If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart you will know when you find it and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking.
KAREN BARLOW: Apple is locked in a legal battle with rival Samsung over alleged smartphone patent infringements but even Samsung took time out to join the likes of Bill Gates and Barack Obama in praising Steve Jobs today.
Apple's new chief executive Tim Cook launched a new iPhone yesterday to less than impressive reviews. It turns out the company was holding fire while it had something more personal to deal with.
No comments:
Post a Comment